We woke up had eggs with toast and fruit. We had some time so we walked around the village. Granted there was a solar panel powering the store, and some hefty radio antennas by some of the huts, you felt that you were at an authentic (if slightly modernized) hill tribe village. There wasn’t anyone trying to sell you gaudy souvenirs, the water and pop didn’t really cost much more than it would from the 7-11 down in Chiang Mai. There was a school with about 12 kids in it, cattle roaming around, chickens everywhere (the roosters started at about 1:00am eugh!) pig pens, pigs not in pens, really neat stuff.
We got back and it was a much easier hike to the next village, much smaller, and essentially it was just to get out of the sun, buy some water, and maybe a bag of chips. We walked along a stream, through the jungle, and eventually to the first waterfall. It wasn’t huge and the water was freezing, but it was an opportunity to swim and become less sweaty. We had lunch and played with a cat for a while and then went on to the next waterfall. It was beautiful, sandy bottom, but not deep enough to swim. The water seemed warmer and it was great for the legs and feet to cool off. After this we walked off to the camp for the night. No roosters this time! It was right on the side of the creek, and we had a big bonfire. There were some huge chunks of wood and Tej and I had a mission to burn through them before going to sleep.
We woke up around 8:00 to give copies of our passport to the guide to take to the tourist police (so they knew who was where) then later around 9:00 were picked up to bring our bags to storage. We left around 10 so the guide could pick up the ingredients for our dinner at a market. Our tour consisted of 4 Danish girls: Louise, Lada, Sophie, Melaina; 2 Austrian girls: Agnes, Juliet; 2 Australians: Sam, Lisa; 1 U.K. guy: Tej and us 3 Canadians.
The first stop was the elephant park. We had some food first and then got up on the elephants. We were short one elephant sort, so myself and Tej ended up riding on the neck of the elephant where the guide usually goes. Amy and Jen were in the seat behind me… at least at the beginning. The seat started tilted to one side, Amy’s side, and it just kept going more and more. Eventually it was me jumping off the elephant to try and hold up the seat while Amy and Jen hung on up top. Eventually we got them back up onto the neck of the elephant and were able to reattach the the seat to the elephant and continue the tour. The rest of the trip on the elephant consisted of him sucking up saliva and spraying it on us as we walked through the jungle.
We then got to the first day of hiking. It was pretty hard the first day. Really steep, really hot, and really dry. For the most part the group stayed pretty close together, but for the end, the steepest part Tej and I decided to go off ahead a bit instead of waiting for everyone as we had been and as happens when two guys are off showing that neither of us are all that tired, we ended up hiking up a lot fast than either of us really wanted to.
Eventually we met up with the guides brother who took us to the village. By the way, the guide’s nickname is Oaf — pronounced “Off.” Anyways, we get up there, a really neat bamboo building with nice mosquito nets. Amy and I got a massage from the tribe, it was really nice after the day of hiking. I had 3 people working on me at once… fan-tastic!
Dinner was curry by candle light, followed by fruit. We played cards with Tej and Louise and Lada for a while and had a pretty early night (even after trying to stay up “late” aka like 9:00)
